Called an 'oracle' and 'sage', the involuntary founder of an unofficial cult, Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) was one of the most famous men of the 1960s, from whose name a French word (mcluhanisme) was coined. His reputation as a communications theoriest was established by two of many books. TheGutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) explains how society and human psychology were changed when pre-literate oral culture was supplanted by the invention of the phonetic alphabet and a manuscript culture gave way to the Gutenberg era of movable type, the printing press, andmass-produced books. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan's most widely read book, explores the next development, the electronic age, and its effects on individuals and society.The early letters in this collection offer a fascinating background to McLuhan's intellectual growth; the bulk of them, however, contain many interesting discussions of ideas that later became subjects in his books. His correspondents include some of the best-known names of the sixties andseventies and range from Woody Allen to Tom Wolfe. Heavily annotated, the letters are arranged in three sections, each with a period introduction:1931-1936 takes McLuhan through the University of Manitoba and Cambridge University.1936-1946 covers one year's teaching at the Univeristy of Wisconsin; two years at Saint Louis University; one year, with his bride, at Cambridge for work on his Ph.D.; four more years at Saint Louis; and two years as Assuption College, Windsor, Ontario. These letters include a large correspondencewith Wyndham Lewis.The last section begins in 1946, when McLuhan went to the University of Toronto. (Two years later he began a long correspondence with Ezra Pound.) Covering the period of McLuhan's fame, it ends in September 1979 with a letter to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, written shortly before McLuhan had a strokethat rendered him speechless.These letters have been selected from a large collection, now in the Public Archives of Canada, assembled by Corinne McLuhan, McLuhan's widow, and Matie Molinaro, his literary agent.

Called an `oracle' and `sage', the involuntary founder of an unofficial cult, Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) was one of the most famous men of the 1960s, from whose name a French word (mcluhanisme) was coined. His reputation as a communications theoriest was established by two of many books. TheGutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) explains how society and human psychology were changed when pre-literate oral culture was supplanted by the invention of the phonetic alphabet and a manuscript culture gave way to the Gutenberg era of movable type, the printing press, andmass-produced books. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan's most widely read book, explores the next development, the electronic age, and its effects on individuals and society.The early letters in this collection offer a fascinating background to McLuhan's intellectual growth; the bulk of them, however, contain many interesting discussions of ideas that later became subjects in his books. His correspondents include some of the best-known names of the sixties andseventies and range from Woody Allen to Tom Wolfe. Heavily annotated, the letters are arranged in three sections, each with a period introduction:1931-1936 takes McLuhan through the University of Manitoba and Cambridge University.1936-1946 covers one year's teaching at the Univeristy of Wisconsin; two years at Saint Louis University; one year, with his bride, at Cambridge for work on his Ph.D.; four more years at Saint Louis; and two years as Assuption College, Windsor, Ontario. These letters include a large correspondencewith Wyndham Lewis.The last section begins in 1946, when McLuhan went to the University of Toronto. (Two years later he began a long correspondence with Ezra Pound.) Covering the period of McLuhan's fame, it ends in September 1979 with a letter to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, written shortly before McLuhan had a strokethat rendered him speechless.These letters have been selected from a large collection, now in the Public Archives of Canada, assembled by Corinne McLuhan, McLuhan's widow, and Matie Molinaro, his literary agent.

Surveys the life and career of the social theorist best known for the quotation, "The medium is the message, " who helped shape the culture of the 1960s and predicted the future of television and the rise of the Internet.

Unbuttoned McLuhan! An intimate exploration of Marshall McLuhan’s ideas in his own words In the last twenty years of his life, Marshall McLuhan published – often in collaboration with others – a series of books that established his reputation as the pre-eminent seer of the modern age. It was McLuhan who made the distinction between “hot” and “cool” media. It was he who observed that “the medium is the message” and who tossed off dozens of other equally memorable phrases from “the global village” and “pattern recognition” to “feedback” and “iconic” imagery. McLuhan was far more than a pithy-phrase maker, however. He foresaw – at a time when the personal computer was a teckie fantasy – that the world would be brought together by the internet. He foresaw the transformations that would be wrought by digital technology. He understood, before any of his contemporaries, the consequences of the revolution that television and the computer were bringing about. In many ways, we’re still catching up to him. In Understanding Me, Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines have brought together eighteen previously unpublished lectures and interviews by or involving Marshall McLuhan. They have in common the informality and accessibility of the spoken word. In every case, the text is the transcript taken down from the film, audio, or video tape of the actual encounters – this is not what McLuhan wrote but what he said. The result is a revelation: the seer who often is thought of as aloof and obscure is shown to be funny, spontaneous, and easily understood.

A new look at the man who gave us ideas "the medium is the message" and "global village".

Say the name Marshall McLuhan and you think of the great discover's explorations of the media. But throughout his life, McLuhan never stopped reflecting profoundly on the nature of God and worship, and on the traditions of the Church. Often other intellectuals and artists would ask him incredulously, Are you really a Catholic? He would answer, Yes, I am a Catholic, the worst kind -- a convert, leaving them more baffled than before. Here, like a golden thread lining his public utterances on the media, are McLuhan's brilliant probes into the nature of conversion, the church's understanding of media, the shape of tomorrow's church, religion and youth, and the God-making machines of the modern world. This fascinating collection, gathered from his many and scattered remarks, essays, and other writings, shows the deeply Christian side of a man widely considered the most important thinker of our time, a man whose insights into media and culture have revolutionized the field of media study and the way we see the world.